GA golfers finish 2nd in OVC

Fairland repeated as league champions with a 37-stroke victory over the field on Friday at the 2018 Ohio Valley Conference golf championships held at Portsmouth Elks Country Club in Scioto County.

The Dragons posted a four-man tally of 168 on the front nine, then followed with a 169 on the back side to post a winning tally of 337.

Gallia Academy — last year’s runner-up — again finished second with a pair of 187s en route to a final score of 374.

Chesapeake was third out of six teams with a 383, with Portsmouth finishing just one shot back with a 384. Coal Grove and South Point completed the team standings with respective efforts of 387 and 455.

The top nine individual golfers came away with All-OVC honors, and the Blue Devils landed a pair of student-athletes within that realm.

Sophomore Cooper Davis repeated as an all-league selection and also paced the Blue and White with a seventh place finish of 87. Junior Hobie Graham also claimed the final All-OVC spot with a ninth place effort of 91.

Wyatt Sipple was next for GAHS with a 97, while Reece Thomas completed the team tally with a 99. William Hendrickson and Elijah Blazer also shot respective rounds of 116 and 120 for the Blue Devils.

Fairland’s Clayton Thomas was the OVC medalist with a 6-over par round of 77, edging out Portsmouth’s William Sturgill (78) by a single shot.

Reece Bellville of Fairland, Jake Sites of Coal Grove and Hannah Shrout of Fairland — who won the individual OVC girls championship last week — respectively rounded out the top five spots with rounds of 80, 83 and 84.

Jed Whitworth of Coal Grove was sixth with an 86, while Jacob Lemley of Chesapeake was eighth with an 88.